The Secret Behind The Greek’s Return by Michelle Smart

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MARISAWASADDINGblusher to her cheeks when Nikos walked into her bedroom. Her heart thumped to see him and she had to concentrate hard to affect nonchalance at his appearance and stop her hand from reacting to the thump and splodging blusher over her nose.

After they’d made the wedding arrangements that morning, Nikos had casually mentioned they would be going to his nightclub on the island that night to celebrate their engagement.

She’d been unable to think of one good reason to refuse.

Not having bothered to pack any going-out clothes, she’d got him to drop her at the main shopping district in Chora so she could buy herself an outfit to party in. She’d wandered through designer boutiques and more touristy shops with no idea why the thought of celebrating made her feel so bereft.

She’d agreed to marry him. She’d agreed it would happen in Mykonos. She’d agreed it would happen this coming weekend. She didn’t have a clue how he’d got the officials to agree for it to happen so quickly, but here she was, a day after she’d told him one of her terms for agreeing to marriage was that he had to stop taking charge, just five days from actually doing the deed.

To make the day extra special, they would be marrying on their son’s first birthday. She thought this fitting. The stars were aligning to approve her decision.

On top of all that, Nikos had agreed to her stipulation about them living in Spain. So what did she have to feel bereft about?

And why had she found herself wandering away from the shops and into the more residential areas with the strings of her heart tugging manically to imagine a small Nikos playing on the uneven cobbled streets?

He walked over to where she sat at the dressing table, lifted her hair and placed a kiss to the nape of her neck. Sensation quivered deliciously over her skin.

‘You smell gorgeous,’ he murmured, ‘and look spectacular.’

She met his reflection in the mirror and smiled through the ache growing in her chest. He looked pretty spectacular himself. Dressed in black chinos, dark grey shirt unbuttoned at the throat and a charcoal blazer, he managed to look smart, casual, elegant and devilishly handsome all at once.

‘Did you get hold of your mother?’ he asked.

She nodded as she opened her palate of eyeshadow.

‘And?’

‘She said to tell you that if you hurt me, she’ll personally see that you never father another child.’

There was a flickering in his eyes but his tone remained casual. ‘And what did you say to that?’

‘That I’m not stupid enough to let you hurt me again.’ She picked up a brush and dabbed it into the glittering deep brown colour and met his gaze again before applying it to her eyelids. ‘Our marriage is for Niki’s sake. We both know that. And now she knows that.’

‘But is she supportive of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your sister?’

‘She thinks I’m mad, but she’s coming to the wedding.’

‘Why does she think you’re mad?’

She shrugged, taking a fresh brush and dabbing it into the glittering gold colour. She wouldn’t repeat her sister’s furious rant about Marisa throwing her life away on a man who’d happily discarded her like unwanted trash. But Elsa wasn’t a mother with a child who would thrive much better with his father a permanent part of his life. ‘Elsa’s in love. She thinks only people in love should marry.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘That love marriages are, historically speaking, a recent thing.’ She reached for her mascara. ‘History is littered with successful marriages built without love.’ And she’d spent an hour sitting on the beach terrace of his nightclub, which was a café by day, searching her phone for examples of them while waiting for Nikos to collect her.

‘I bet those successful marriages had great sex at their core.’

‘But only with each other.’ She held his gaze a moment longer before applying her mascara, trying her hardest to keep her hand steady so she didn’t poke herself in the eye at the lie she’d just uttered.

Most of the successful non-love marriages she’d read about had only been successful because both spouses had either turned a blind eye to other lovers or explicitly agreed to them.

She knew there was no way she could tolerate or accept infidelity—just the thought of Nikos in the arms of another woman made her stomach churn violently—and had searched even harder for the faithful marriages. But those had brought no comfort either. They had been successful because the couples had fallen in love with each other.

Nikos heard the unspoken warning and put his hands on her shoulders to drop a kiss into her hair. ‘Then I am ahead of you on this one,’ he said silkily. ‘There has been only you since the day we met and while you wear this, there will be only you.’

She twisted to face him.

He dug into his back pocket and pulled out a black velvet box. He flicked the lid open and held it out to her. ‘Your engagement ring.’

She stared at it for the longest time. He wondered if she was waiting for him to drop to one knee. That, of course, would be ludicrous.

Strangely, when he’d found the ring—and he’d scoured every jewellery shop in Chora before finding his gaze drawn to this one—he’d examined it closely with an unbidden fantasy playing out in his mind. In that fantasy he’d dropped to one knee. In that fantasy, Marisa had cupped her cheeks in delight then thrown her arms around him. In that fantasy, she’d said she loved him.

He’d pulled himself out of the fantasy with his guts twisting. They twisted now to remember it. It had to be fatherhood causing this unseemly sentimentality. Nikos’s love for his son was like a garden of drab weeds suddenly filled with beautifully scented colourful flowers. It was not unreasonable to suppose his subconscious would try to extend that love to the mother of his son.

‘Are you going to try it on?’ he asked when she made no move to touch the ring.

She plucked it from the box and slid it on her wedding finger. Then she got to her feet and held it out to him. ‘It’s perfect.’

For a moment he was too taken with the whole effect to respond. Wearing a short black sequined wrap-around dress that hugged her curves and exposed just the right amount of cleavage, she glittered; an exotic shimmering mirage. She must have sprayed something in her hair too for, under the ceiling light, it glimmered too.

At that moment, all he could think was that she was perfect.

Stratos, who’d taken his lady friend out to dinner, was getting out of his car as Marisa slipped into the back of Nikos’s. She waved. The lady friend waved back. Stratos pretended not to see her.

‘Why does your grandfather hate me?’ she asked Nikos when his driver set off.

‘He doesn’t hate you.’

‘Haven’t you noticed? He barely acknowledges my existence.’

After a moment, he sighed. ‘He is angry you didn’t tell him about Niki.’

She tried to keep her composure but his unexpected answer pierced straight through her.

‘Why didn’t you tell him?’ The question was asked amiably enough but she could see the curiosity in the light brown eyes.

‘Nikos...’ About to tell him how she’d fallen to pieces when he’d been presumed dead, she stopped herself. ‘Your death... I was grieving you when I learned I was pregnant.’ It had suddenly struck her, the only moment of clarity in two weeks of desolation and anguish, that her daily bouts of nausea might have a different cause to grief: The food poisoning she’d suffered the month before his disappearance and the realisation it could have affected the contraceptive pill she took faithfully.

Had she blocked out the effects it could have on the pill because she’d subconsciously wanted a baby...?

Shaking off the ridiculous thought, she said, ‘The pregnancy came as a shock...’ The biggest shock but also the most miraculous. ‘But a good shock.’ Good enough to pull her out of the pit of despair and give her focus.

His eyes bored into her. ‘You were glad to be carrying my child?’

She touched the tips of her fingers to his warm cheek. ‘Knowing I had your child growing inside me gave me more comfort than you can imagine. I never intended to keep it a secret, I just wanted to get past the three-month mark before I told anyone other than my immediate family. I guess I was being superstitious about it but the fear of miscarrying was very real to me.’ Terrifying.

Even now she dreaded to think what she would have done if she’d lost her baby, lost that last link to Nikos in those dark times.

‘But then, when I reached the safe three-month mark, all the stuff with the cartel started. I found Rocco dead...’ She closed her eyes to clear the image of her beautiful dog, drowned in the pool. ‘I cannot tell you how frightened I was. I was terrified they’d learn about the pregnancy. By the time Niki was born, I’d lost my father to the cartel too and my life had turned into a nightmare. All I cared about—and I do mean all—was keeping him safe and protected from them. We turned the estate into a fortress that I hid our son and myself in as much as I could.’

Marisa watched Nikos as she spoke, watched as his face slowly tightened into stillness, his only reaction an almost imperceptible movement of his Adam’s apple.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to your grandfather,’ she whispered. ‘I should have done. I should have thought of him, and if I’d known how close you were and just how much he meant to you, I would have done. Please, tell him it wasn’t deliberate malice on my part and that I’m really sorry I hurt him.’

Lips taut, he bowed his head. ‘I will explain everything to him.’

‘Thank you.’

Nikos rested his head back and blew out a long breath of air, fighting the cauldron of emotions battering his guts at all she’d had to deal with.

He should have been there.

‘You remember the day you first saw me with Niki?’ she said, breaking through his thoughts.

He pinched the bridge of his nose and nodded.

‘That was the first time he’d left the estate since he was born. I had him at home,’ she added.

‘That explains why he’s so shy with strangers,’ he said, attempting a smile.

‘Probably.’ She covered his hand with hers and gently squeezed.

‘I did wonder why you hid yourself away even before your father’s death,’ he mused aloud, returning the caress.

Her face jerked. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘I had you watched,’ he admitted.

Her eyes widened in shock.

‘The cartel sent me a photo of you,’ he reminded her, speaking evenly to fight the bile that always rose whenever he remembered the moment Marisa’s picture had suddenly appeared amongst the photos of his lawyer’s desecrated body.

Nikos had already been fighting a roll of nausea but that picture of Marisa, clearly taken using a long-range lens, had pushed him over the edge and he’d vomited for the first time in his adult life.

‘Felipe Lorenzi’s team helped me fake my death and protect my people, and I paid them to put a team together to watch over you too.’

Even beneath the make-up she wore, colour stained her face.

‘I had them keep watch over the estate and follow you closely but discreetly every time you left it, and report to me daily by email. I did the same with my grandfather.’ He managed a smile. ‘Wi-Fi was practically the only modern convenience that log cabin had. I needed to assure myself that you were safe. My biggest regret is that I didn’t ask them to watch your whole family as well when they left the estate.’ He swallowed back another wave of nausea. ‘I didn’t know your family had been dealing with the cartel too, not until after your father’s death.’

She continued to stare at him. He could see her thinking, putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. When she spoke, a tremor rang through her voice. ‘So, when we employed Felipe to fortify our home with his men and to work with us and the international security services to bring the cartel down, they were already working for you on the same thing?’

He inclined his head.

‘Then how did you not know about our son?’

‘For reasons of confidentiality.’ Nikos had confronted Felipe about his failure to mention in a single one of his staff’s reports about Marisa, the pregnancy or subsequent birth of Niki. ‘My instructions were to keep a watchful eye on you and to take action at any sign of danger. When your family then came to employ his team too, they were bound under strict privacy contracts. Would you have welcomed them into your home and entrusted your physical safety to them if you’d thought they would discuss your private lives with others?’

Lips clamped together, she hesitated then shook her head.

‘If the pregnancy or Niki’s birth had been relevant to any of the reports, I would have been told, but the subject never came up. God knows, I wish it had...’

‘Would it have changed things if you had known about him?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know.’ He clamped his jaws together. ‘Maybe it was for the best that I didn’t know. If I’d reappeared before they were taken down you would have been an even bigger target for them. But those months... Marisa, they were the hardest of my life. Physically. Mentally. When I learned the cartel had targeted your family, I thought I was going mad. The only thing that stopped me—’

He cut himself off, thrown back again to the sheer terror that had clutched his heart and how close he’d come to hiking through the mountains to get to civilisation and back to her.

He took a deep breath and continued. ‘Once I knew Felipe had taken responsibility for your family’s safety I could think a little straighter but it was still hard. I hate to think I would have endangered you or our son for the sake of my ego.’

‘It must have been hard for you being so far from the action and for all that time,’ Marisa intuited. Nikos was such a take-charge man she could imagine nothing more excruciating for him than being stuck thousands of kilometres away, unable to influence anything.

‘It was horrendous. Felipe must have known I would struggle to be so far from you...from everything...and that’s why I was given a log cabin in the middle of nowhere that needed constant maintenance.’ He managed a grin. ‘It’s hard to spend your days brooding when there’s trees to fell and water to collect if you want to drink or clean yourself.’

Oh, God, tears were forming. Marisa could feel them stabbing into her eyes and she blinked rapidly to stop them falling, using her hand as a fan to dry them.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

She smiled to assure him she was fine but didn’t dare open her mouth, not until she had control of herself.

The deprivation he’d put himself through. The isolation.

Eighteen months of his life.

She’d never thought of it in those terms before or considered how tough it must have been for such a gregarious man to give up everything that made life a joy and hide in the shadows, or considered how selfless his actions had been.

He’d done all that, in part, for her. And he’d paid for her to be watched over. He hadn’t just faked his death and forgotten about her, as she’d thought, he’d paid a crack team of ex-special forces to watch over her and keep her safe, long before she’d even known the murderous cartel existed.

Did that mean that he had cared for her?

But if he had, then why had he, before he’d discovered their son’s existence, been happy for her to learn of his resurrection on the grapevine? If you cared for someone, you didn’t treat them like that.

Could things be any more confusing?

As she fanned her hand in front of her face, her engagement ring glinted. It was an art deco style, pear-cut champagne diamond set in rose-gold. When he’d produced it, she’d had to work so hard not to let the joy burst out of her.

Marisa absolutely adored champagne diamonds. Loved the colours and the way they changed under the light. And she loved rose-gold over normal gold. And she loved anything art deco.

The man who wanted to marry her so he could always be a part of their son’s life had given her the engagement ring of her dreams.

The driver stopped outside a typical Mykonos building; whitewashed Cycladic style, set along a narrow cobbled street but which differed from the other bustling streets they’d driven through by the sheer number of people queuing like overdressed bunches of grapes for admission. It was all very different from when she’d waited for him earlier, drinking coffee on the club’s beach terrace.

When she stepped out of the car, the flash of cameras in Marisa’s face announced the paparazzi’s presence.

In an instant, Nikos was at her side, taking her hand and sweeping her past the enormous bouncers, who parted in surprisingly nimble fashion to admit them.

Inside, the feel and vibe of the place were exactly what she expected from her experiences at his other nightclubs. Bodies packed like sardines, drinks in hand, swaying under multi-coloured strobe lights to the pumping beat. A Manolas nightclub was not somewhere you went for conversation. It was a place you went to dance the night away to the best DJs in the world.

The VIP section of his Mykonos club was reached by a set of wide stairs that formed a semi-circle around the main dance floor. More bouncers guarded the entrance to it. One unhooked the red tasselled rope barrier and nodded a respectful greeting as they slipped past them.

The inner sanctum was far less crowded than the ground floor and she recognised many of the faces in it even if she didn’t know them personally. They all seemed to know her, though, or of her, and as she sipped champagne, flashed her engagement ring at anyone who asked, and had shouted conversation with one of Nikos’s cousins, she relaxed.

She’d always relaxed in Nikos’s clubs. In her university years she’d often gone on girls’ weekends away to Ibiza and always they had dressed up and hit Manolas. They’d all agreed it was their favourite club because they felt safe there. Plentiful bouncers and more discreet undercover security in the crowds had stopped drunken wandering hands going too far, and then there had been the freedom of knowing your drink wouldn’t get spiked thanks to the strict no-drugs policy. Having your bags searched and having to empty your pockets at the entrance was a small price to pay for that kind of safety.

It had never occurred to her to question why Nikos enforced such a tough policy on drugs, not even when they’d formed a relationship, and, as she cast her gaze around the heaving dance floor, she thought again of everything it had cost him to stop the cartel from filling this place and all his other clubs with their narcotics and help stop anyone else falling into the kind of addiction that had turned his parents into monsters and ultimately killed his mother.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked, speaking into her ear to be heard.

She smiled and rose up on her toes to plant a kiss to his mouth. That was something he often asked. If he didn’t care for her, why would he want to know?

As the night went on and the partying got more raucous and Nikos stayed glued to her side, she found herself asking the same questions—if Nikos really only wanted to marry her for their son’s sake, why did he care so much about what she thought? Why had he gone out of his way to choose the perfect engagement ring for her?

And, if he didn’t care for her, why had he gone to so much effort to keep her safe even before he’d known their son existed?

‘Let’s get some air,’ she shouted after the midnight hour had struck.

Hands clasped, they headed out to the huge VIP terrace.

Avoiding the smoking section, they settled on a secluded sweetheart seat and let the sea breeze cool their skin. Outside, the noise levels were far more favourable for conversation but Marisa was content to listen to the laughter from the revellers on the ground floor beach terrace and the snatched chatter of others partying on their own.

Fingers playing absently with the buttons of his shirt, she only realised she’d undone one and had slipped her hand under it to encircle a nipple when he huskily said, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Touching you.’ She tilted her head to stare into his eyes. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

His eyes gleamed. ‘No.’

‘Good.’ She stretched her leg and then casually hooked it over his lap. A large hand rested on her thigh, right at the hem that had ruched up to skim her bottom. Marisa leaned into him and pressed her face into his neck. ‘You smell amazing.’

Moving her hand from his nipple, she pulled it out from beneath his shirt and slowly trailed her fingers down his stomach to his belt.

When her fingers gently traced over the length of his erection, straining beneath the confines of his chinos, Nikos tightened the grip on his glass of bourbon. There was something incredibly seductive about her touch and the way she kept nuzzling her nose into his neck, arousing him despite the revellers spilling out in all directions.

How far was she prepared to take this?

How far was he prepared to let her take it?

She lifted her face to lick the lobe of his ear. ‘I haven’t thanked you properly for my ring, have I?’

She gently cupped his erection again before her fingers crept back up his chest. He didn’t know if he was relieved or disappointed, then found himself swallowing as she moved her thigh just enough that her knee pressed against his excitement.

‘When we get back, I’ll thank you properly,’ she breathed, rubbing her nose over his cheek then capturing his bottom lip with her teeth. She nipped it gently at the same moment she encircled his other nipple.

He tightened his grip on her thigh, fighting the heady urge to slip his fingers beneath the material.

Just at the moment lust was about to override propriety, she unhooked her leg, jumped to her feet and tugged at his hand. ‘That’s enough air. Let’s dance.’

Stunned at the change of pace, he stared at the beautiful face alive with more delight than he had seen in...since he’d come back to her.

‘You want to dance?’ he managed to croak.

She pulled her lips together before another wide smile lit her face, and she leaned over to speak in his ear, giving him a wonderful view of her naked breasts in the dip made in the material. ‘Not really. I want you to take me home.’

He just stared at her. Somehow, her smile widened even more.

‘Have I stopped you thinking, mi amado?’ Wickedness flashed in her eyes before she slipped her hand over his buttocks and ran her tongue over his lips. ‘Now you know how you make me feel.’

Then she stepped back again and waved the phone he hadn’t even felt her filch from his back pocket at him.

Nikos snatched it from her and called his driver.